The information in this guidance document is based on previous human factors work conducted in Alberta and British Columbia by members of the Western Canada Human Factors Collaborative (a subgroup of the Western Canada Healthcare CEO Forum).

The audience for this document is the Human Factors Specialists responsible for implementing human factors evaluations within procurement activities. The intention of this guidance document is to establish recommended best practice amongst the member provinces of the Western Canada Healthcare CEO Forum for integrating human factors evaluations into any procurement activity. The human factors evaluation approach described in this document does not replace the evaluations that are administratively led and managed by procurement leads and completed by procurement evaluation committees. When appropriate it is best to consider the human factors evaluations described in this document as an embedded component of the procurement evaluation process. This document includes recommendations for human factors evaluations of high priority medical devices, equipment, and technologies to help determine when a human factors evaluation may be appropriate.

This document may also be used by healthcare organizations that are interested in introducing human factors evaluations as part of their procurement activities. The document includes a section that describes some of the challenges that organizations may experience when integrating human factors in to procurement activities and provides guidance on strategies to overcome those challenges. Interested organizations may also wish to contact member(s) of the Western Canada Human Factors Collaborative for guidance (Appendix A).

The Collaborative was developed as a subcommittee of the Western Healthcare CEO Forum by request from the Western Canada Quality and Patient Safety Group and the Western Canada Supply Chain Group. The role of the Western Canada Human Factors Collaborative is to share information and expertise with health service delivery organizations in Western Canada about integrating human factors planning, requirements, and evaluation methodologies into procurement processes for medical devices, equipment and technologies.

The collaborative is comprised of representation from Alberta Health Services, Health Quality Council of Alberta, Interior Health, University of Calgary, Vancouver Coastal Health and W21C.